George Clooney has signed up to star in A Very Private Gentleman for director Anton Corbijn (Control) and Focus Features. The film sees Clooney playing an assassin, which shouldn't be too much of a stretch since he's already a ladykiller.
Sorry.
Anyway, the film's based on Martin Booth's book of the same name (although strictly speaking he's not so much an assassin there; just a designer of weapons for assassins, but let's not split hairs). Our (anti)hero Clark moves to a rural Southern Italian village and poses as an artist painting butterfly miniatures. He overcomes his normal anti-social tendencies to make friends with some of the locals, building a relationship with a prostitute and having semi-confessional sessions with the local priest. However, he begins to sense that someone's on his trail, and things get messy.
The screenplay's being written by 28 Weeks Later's Rowan Joffe for Corbijn to direct, and is due to shoot in Italy this fall - which should suit Clooney very well, since he can head home to his Lake Como house at weekends. Jammy git (and he's never invited us over. Not once. How inhospitable!).
From everything we've read about this one, it should be a dark-tinged, offbeat sort of assassin tale, entirely up Clooney's alley and offering Corbijn more chances to build on the ace feature debut that was Control.